THE  PRESENT  MIS- 
SIONA~RY  SITUATION 


AN  ADDRESS 
to  the  CHURCH 


HUH 


003 


THE  Open  Door  Emergency- 
Movement  was  originated  by 
'JA~  the  Board  of  Bishops,  who 
recommended  the  movement  to 
the  General  Missionary  Committee. 
This  Committee  in  turn  approved 
and  referred  the  whole  matter 
to  the  Board  of  Managers.  The 
Board  of  Managers  appointed  a 
Commission  and  also  elected  Field 
Secretaries  to  work  under  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  the  Commissic  n.  All  com¬ 
munications  concerning  the  Open 
Door  Emergency  Movement  should 
be  addressed  to  the  Executive 
Secretary,  Mr.  S.  Earl  Taylor, 
150  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York  City 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2020  with  funding  from 
Columbia  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/presentmissionarOOopen 


The  Present  Missionary  Situation 


An  Address  to  the  Church  by  the 
Open  Door  Emergency  Commission 


THE  Open  Door  Emergency  Commission  gratefully 
recognizes  in  the  work  of  the  past  year  the  abundant 
blessing  of  Almighty  God  and  the  cordial  co-op¬ 
eration  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church.  With  faith 
in  God  and  with  confidence  in  the  Church,  we  face  the 
opportunities  and  responsibilities  of  the  hour.  In  order 
that  these  opportunities  and  responsibilities  may  be  more 
clearly  apprehended,  we  are  constrained  to  review  briefly 
the  present  missionary  situation  as  it  relates  to  our 
Church. 

THE  OPEN  DOOR  IN  THE  HOME  FIELD 

The  foreign  population  and  the  cities  so  blend  their 
dangers  and  their  difficulties  as  almost  to  be  one  problem 
and  to  offer  a  single  challenge  to  our  profoundest  efforts. 
Our  six  largest  cities — Baltimore,  Boston,  Chicago,  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  St.  Louis — contain  with  their 
environs  a  seventh  of  our  population. 

But  while  our  total  foreign  born  are  about  ten 
millions,  or  thirteen  per  cent,  of  our  whole  population. 
New  York  is  thirty-seven  per  cent,  foreign  born,  Boston 
thirty-five  per  cent.,  Chicago  thirty-four  per  cent.  Our 
greatest  need  is  in  our  cities.  Here  the  emergency  is 
acute,  and  must  be  met  if  Protestant  Christianity  is  to 
continue  its  supremacy.  Says  Dr.  F.  M.  North,  “  The 
frontiers  are  now'  streets,  not  acres.  The  reflex  action 
of  civic  upon  rural  life  was  never  what  it  is  to-day. 


The  Cities 

and  the 
Frontier 


The  Colored 
Population 


Meaning  and 
Appeal  of 
H  eathenism 


The  city  is  America’s  central  home  mission  field.  Nor 
is  the  reflex  action  true  only  of  the  homeland.  The 
testimony  comes  from  Germany,  from  Scandinavia,  from 
Italy,  from  China,  from  Japan,  that  the  evangelization 
here  of  those  whom  we  call  foreigners  means  the 
radiation  of  a  mighty  influence  throughout  lands  we 
shall  never  see.” 

The  colored  population  numbers  one-seventh  of  the 
republic.  The  revelation  of  the  wonderful  progress  of 
this  people  since  they  were  set  free,  made  at  their  great 
Christian  Congress  at  Atlanta,  in  August,  1902,  may  be 
counted  as  one  of  the  most  encouraging  signs  of  the 
time.  But  the  eight  or  ten  thousand  gathered  there  were 
the  flower  of  all  that  Christianity  and  education  have 
done  for  this  race.  They  were  leaders,  and  back  of 
them  were  the  churches  and  the  schools  sending  them  as 
representatives.  Out  beyond  the  circles  of  religious 
interest  and  mental  culture  there  are  still  large  masses  of 
this  portion  of  our  body  politic  with  souls  unkindled  and 
open  to  every  temptation  and  vice.  No  one  has  seen 
more  clearly  and  stated  more  wisely  and  forcefully  than 
the  colored  men  and  women  there  assembled,  the  stu¬ 
pendous  tasks  yet  to  be  wrought  out  before  the  race  as  a 
whole  will  be  assuredly  on  the  upward  path  to  a  safe 
future.  In  these  tasks  the  Missionary  Society  of  our 
Church  must  bear  a  worthy  part. 

THE  OPEN  DOOR  IN  FOREIGN  LANDS 

Marvelous  transformations  have  been  effected  by 
Christian  missions  among  heathen  peoples,  but  great 
tracts  of  non-Christian  life  are  as  yet  untouched,  and 
heathenism  itself  continues  to  be  a  hideous  empire  of 
depravity,  misery  and  shame.  In  addition  to  those  evils 
which  undermine  the  life  of  the  individual  in  Christian 
lands,  as  well  as  the  pronounced  forms  of  eeotism,  selfish- 


ness,  pride,  dishonesty  and  brutality — infirmities  which 
characterize  a  fallen  race — there  are  the  outbreaking 
social  evils,  which  not.  infrequently  are  imbedded  in  the 
religious  faiths  of  the  people  and  are  sanctioned  by  their 
most  revered  characters,  as  well  as  by  immemorial 
custom. 

Heathenism  is  physical,  mental,  moral,  spiritual,  social 
and  governmental  perversion  of  right  human  life — Godless, 
decadent,  hopeless — and  must  be  awakened  and  reconstructed 
by  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ. 

We  do  not  declare  that  heathenism  as  a  whole  has  A  World-Wide 
become  sated  with  its  own  death  in  life,  but  we  do  Restlessness 
unhesitatingly  affirm  that  there  is  a  world-wide  restless¬ 
ness  such  as  has  never  been  known  before,  and  a  conse¬ 
quent  world-wide  opportunity  for  the  entrance  of  the 
Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  only  religion  that  adequately 
inspires  and  accomplishes  individual  and  national 
regeneration. 

In  China,  following  the  Boxer  insurrection  of  1900,  China 
has  come  an  unprecedented  readiness  to  listen  to  the 
Gospel  message.  Districts,  and  even  whole  provinces, 
hitherto  turbulent  at  the  approach  of  Christian  workers, 
now  welcome  them.  The  country  is  open  to  evangelical 
work  everywhere.  Bishop  Moore  declares  that  the 
clamor  for  Christian  schools  is  incessant,  “  rolling  like 
the  thunder  of  the  surf  upon  the  coast.”  All  the  empire, 
with  its  quarter  of  the  population  of  the  globe,  is  in  a 
ferment.  The  blood  of  a  martyr  church  calls  us  to  a 
new  consecration  of  money  and  forces  for  the  evangel¬ 
ization  of  this  great  people. 

It  was  estimated  a  few  months  ago  that  fully  ten  Japan 
thousand  Japanese  are  desiring  immediate  guidance  in 
spiritual  things.  One  Presiding  Elder  writes  concerning 
his  district,  “A  hundred  places/ which  cannot  be 
touched  with  our  limited  resources,  are  open  and  ready 


Korea 


The 

Philippine 

Islands 


India 


for  the  word  of  the  Lord.”  Applicants  for  entrance  to 
onr  schools  are  being  turned  away  because  of  lack  of 
equipment. 

Korea  may  justly  be  regarded  at  present  as  one  of 
the  great  Pentecostal  fields.  Ten  years  ago  we  had  in 
all  the  empire  of  Korea  only  ten  preaching  points  ;  now 
we  have  155.  Then  we  had  241  members  and  proba¬ 
tioners;  now  we  have  6,000.  Last  year  7,000  patients 
called  at  one  of  our  hospitals  for  treatment.  Yet  we 
are  trying  to  harvest  such  a  ripe  field  with  the  same 
number  of  workers  that  we  had  in  1893. 

To  the  Christian  churches  of  the  United  States  the 
Philippine  Islands  present  one  of  the  most  impressive 
obligations  for  missionary  aggressiveness  ever  laid  upon 
any  people.  The  oppressions  and  iniquities  of  the  friars 
impel  throngs  of  Catholic  Filipinos  to  our  Protestant 
services.  The  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  alone  con¬ 
ducts  forty-five  religious  meetings  in  the  city  of  Manila 
and  suburbs  each  week,  and  has  a  total  attendance  upon 
these  services  of  at  least  twelve  thousand.  Important 
cities  in  the  provinces  also  show  a  marvelous  readiness  to 
receive  the  Gospel. 

In  a  single  Presiding  Elder’s  district  in  India  ten 
thousand  people  have  applied  for  baptism.  In  his  fare¬ 
well  address  in  New  York,  in  November,  1902,  Bishop 
Thoburn  declared  that  there  would  be  at  least  one 
hundred  thousand  natives  who  would  apply  for  Christian 
teaching  along  the  route  of  his  first  episcopal  tour  after 
landing  in  India.  At  the  Cleveland  Convention  he 
declared  it  to  be  his  solemn  conviction  that  if  the 
Protestant  churches  of  America  would  face  the  problem 
of  the  awakening  multitudes  of  India,  within  ten  years  we 
might  have,  either  within  the  pale  of  the  Christian 
Cnurch  or  inquiring  the  way  thither,  ten  millions  in 
India  who  are  now  worshipping  idols. 


In  Africa,  at  all  points  our  missionaries  are  sur¬ 
rounded  by  great  multitudes  of  the  native  blacks,  as  yet 
unreached,  who,  in  most  cases,  welcome  the  approach  of 
the  Christian  worker.  The  six  years  of  work  by  Bishop 
Hartzell  has  resulted  in  a  thorough  reorganization  of  the 
work,  in  the  increase  of  property  holdings,  in  the 
increase  of  workers,  and  has  revealed  to  the  Church  a 
situation  expressed  only  by  opportunity  writ  large  and 
many  times  multiplied. 

In  Latin  America  the  stirrings  toward  religious  and 
civil  liberty  are  almost  everywhere  manifest.  Romanism 
has  been  tried  and  has  been  found  wanting.  It  has  met 
the  need  neither  for  social  nor  for  individual  regeneration. 
The  numerous  republics  of  South  America  and  Mexico 
are  throwing  off  the  yoke  of  Rome  to  the  extent  that 
never  since  the  beginning  of  the  Roman  Catholic  ascend¬ 
ancy  have  there  been  such  promising  opportunities  for 
evangelical  occupation. 

THE  EMERGENCY 

Our  opportunity  is  our  embarrassment.  Our  very 
successes  create  a  sublime  yet  painful  crisis.  Even  with 
the  increase  of  |i  12,000,  which  was  reported  last 
November,  we  are  utterly  unable  to  keep  an  adequate 
force  in  the  field  to  accomplish  the  work  that  now 
presses  upon  us  as  a  result  of  recent  marvelous  successes. 
In  every  foreign  field  the  average  missionary  is  carrying 
the  burden  of  two.  The  inevitable  advance  in  age  and 
the  constant  strain  of  overwork  threaten  speedily  to 
deplete  the  already  insufficient  force.  New  men  must  be 
in  training,  learning  the  languages  and  knowing  the 
fields,  to  take  the  place  of  the  noble  leaders  who  have 
nearly  reached  the  bounds  of  possible  service. 

An  emergency  may  be  created  by  progress  and 
enlargement  as  well  as  by  retrogression ;  but  if  not 


Afri  ca 


Latin 

America 


The 

Embarrass¬ 
ment  of 
Success 


Buildings 

and 

Equipment 

Needed 


New 

Missionaries 

Needed 


responded  to,  the  failure  to  meet  the  claims  of  the  new 
situation  may  itself  produce  retrogression.  What  news¬ 
paper,  if  given  a  hundred-fold  larger  circulation  than  it 
had  thirty  years  ago,  could  maintain  itself,  if  restricted 
to  the  presses  and  appliances  of  that  long-past  era  ? 

Our  missionary  plant  in  buildings  and  equipment  of 
a  generation  ago  cannot  possibly  meet  the  demands  of 
the  vastly  larger  work  to-day.  For  years  but  little 
money  has  been  applied  by  the  Board  for  buildings  or 
repairs.  Not  less  than  a  million  dollars  are  absolutely 
required  to  place  the  material  basis  of  our  missionary 
work  at  home  and  abroad  abreast  of  the  needs  of  this 
hour. 

The  Corresponding  Secretaries  of  the  Missionary 
Society  have  recently  made  this  statement  concerning  the 
need  of  new  missionaries:  “On  most  of  the  fields  the 
number  should  De  at  once  doubled.  This  is  true  of 
Southern  Asia,  including  the  Philippine  Islands ;  Eastern 
Asia,  including  China,  Japan  and  Korea;  and  Africa, 
while  the  needs  of  South  America,  Mexico  and  Italy  are 
scarcely  less  emergent.” 

A  request  came  for  twenty-five  missionaries  for  the 
Philippine  Islands,  but  the  Missionary  Committee,  under 
the  most  generous  impulses,  could  grant  only  fourteen 
thousand  dollars  for  building,  equipment,  traveling 
expenses,  salaries  and  the  aggressive  development  of  this 
most  important  field,  where  a  nation  waits  to  be  born  in 
a  day. 

Bishop  Moore  reports  that  fifty  additional  mission¬ 
aries  are  urgently  demanded  in  China  to  maintain  what 
has  already  been  undertaken ;  Bishop  Hartzell  pleads 
for  the  support  of  ten  white  men  and  women,  and  ten 
black  men  and  women  for  Africa ;  Bishop  Thoburn  says 
that  India  needs  at  least  forty-five  more  missionaries,  in 


order  to  keep  up  with  the  work  that  is  now  attempted. 
“We  are  occupying,”  he  adds,  “  a  field  to-day  which, 
according  to  the  ordinary  expenditures  of  any  modern 
missionary  society,  would  require  about  three  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  we  have  never  had 
the  half  of  it — indeed,  a  tenth  of  it — for  that  field.” 
Bishop  Warne  states  that  practically  all  of  the  five  hun¬ 
dred  thousand  seekers  after  a  new  religion  in  Godavery 
district  could  be  brought  into  the  Christian  Church  if 
there  were  sufficient  workers ;  and  yet,  to  adopt  the 
figure  given  by  Bishop  Foss,  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church,  in  the  person  of  its  missionaries,  is  lining  up 
before  this  dusky  multitude,  who  want  to  forsake  idolatry 
and  come  for  baptism,  and  saying,  with  batons  raised 
like  those  of  policemen, — “  Stand  back,  stand  back,  we 
are  not  ready  for  you;  we  do  not  want  you.”  Our 
missionaries  are  virtually  compelled  to  do  this  heart¬ 
breaking  thing,  because  a  laggard  and  reluctant  Church 
commands  it.  The  Church  commanded  a  retreat  in 
1901,  when  the  eight  per  cent,  cut  in  appropriations 
made  it  necessary  for  one  India  Conference  alone  to  drop 
twenty-three  pastor-teachers,  because  the  nine  hundred 
and  sixty  dollars  needed  to  keep  them  going  for  another 
year  had  been  withheld  by  the  home  Church,  while  seven 
thousand  boys  had  to  be  dismissed  from  our  schools  on 
account  of  decreased  receipts.  In  the  Bengal  Confer¬ 
ence,  comprising  eighty-seven  millions  of  people — greater 
than  the  entire  population  of  the  United  States — one 
aged  missionary  had  to  retire  from  a  district  of  twenty 
million  people,  and  there  was  no  money  to  support  a 
missionary  in  his  place. 

Such  are  the  open  doors  and  such  is  our  evident  inabil¬ 
ity  to  enter  them,  without  a  great  increase  of  missionary 
gifts.  Have  all  the  centuries  ever  made  such  a  call  for 
workers  ? 


Thousands  of 
Seekers 


A  Retreat 
Commanded 


4 


OUR  ABILITY 


We  have 
the  Money 


Opportunity, 
Ability  and 
Obligation 


A  very  reasonable  estimate,  based  on  Government 
statistics,  places  the  wealth  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church  at  three  billion  three  hundred  million  dollars. 

The  average  increase  of  this  wealth  annually,  over  and 
above  all  living  expenses,  including  extravagances  and 
luxuries,  is  estimated  to  be  more  than  one  hundred 
million  dollars.” 

The  wealth  of  the  United  States  doubled  from  1800 
to  1850;  doubled  again  in  1875;  doubled  again  in 
1890  ;  doubled  again  by  the  year  1900.  The  addition 
to  the  wealth  of  the  United  States  during  the  last 
decade  is  $25,000,000,000,  a  saving  within  the  decade 
equal  to  the  aggregate  savings  of  our  people  from  the 
discovery  of  America  to  the  Civil  War,  and  exceeding 
the  savings  of  the  world  from  the  beginning  of  history  to 
the  Declaration  of  Independence ;  ”  and  of  all  this  vast 
increase  of  wealth  a  fair  proportion  must  be  in  the  hands 
of  the  Christian  Church  to-day,  and  in  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  branch  of  the  Christian  Church,  yet  we  find 
that  during  the  past  thirty  years  our  Church  has  not  in¬ 
creased  its  gifts  to  the  Missionary  Society  more  than  one 
cent  per  capita. 

OUR  RESPONSIBILITY 

Our  responsibility  is  commensurate  with  the  great 
need  of  our  own  land  and  the  appalling  need  of  the  heathen 
world.  Our  incomparable  opportunity,  together  with 
our  ability,  intensifies  our  obligation,  and  the  vastness  of 
the  emergency  should  arouse  us  to  the  utmost  endeavor. 

The  tokens  of  God’s  presence  are  unmistakable. 
The  still,  small  voice  in  multitudes  of  hearts  throughout 
the  heathen  world  encourages  the  Church  to  go  forward. 
Men  and  women  who  offer  their  lives  for  service  on  the 
foreign  fields  are  a  constant  challenge  to  us  and  are  a  witness 


to  the  powerful  working  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  Israel 
was  turned  back  to  the  desert  and  the  wilderness  and 
plagues  and  death  because  she  hesitated  to  take  the  advice 
of  two  against  ten.  What  if  the  Church  of  God  con¬ 
tinues  to  falter  when  all  is  of  good  report  ?  The  great 
Apostle,  at  the  inception  of  the  Christian  Church,  in  its 
poverty  and  weakness,  responded  to  the  call  of  one  man 
standing  in  his  soul’s  vision  upon  the  shadowy  shores  of 
Europe.  What  will  be  the  sentence  upon  the  Church, 
in  the  time  of  her  wealth  and  her  power,  if  she  refuses  to 
answer  her  accredited  representatives  at  the  front,  whose 
pleading  is  accentuated  by  the  Macedonian  calls  of  ten 
thousand  times  ten  thousand,  whose  imminent  readiness 
for  the  Gospel  is  supplemented  by  the  infinite  need  of  the 
millions  who  are  still  in  the  midst  of  the  darkness  of 
heathendom. 

t(  The  trumpet  of  God  has  sounded  the  advance  in 
every  part  of  the  world.”  Our  faces  are  to  the  front ; 
we  dare  not  mark  time  longer ;  if  we  turn  back  we 
crucify  afresh  the  Son  of  God. 

“  By  all  the  anguish  of  God’s  Son  in  yonder  garden, 
by  all  His  agony  on  the  cross,  by  all  the  tides  that  sweep 
across  the  shoreless  sea  of  God’s  infinite  love,  and  by 
the  surging  sorrows  ot  a  perishing  world.  He  calls  to  us, 
*  Arise  and  follow  where  I  lead  you  into  these  wide,  open 
fields !  ’  ” 

THE  PLAN  OF  CAMPAIGN 

The  Plan  of  Campaign  which  is  recommended  by 
the  Open  Door  Emergency  Commission  is  simple,  and 
yet  if  the  Church  responds  to  the  call  it  will  be  effective. 
It  is  the  plan  recommended  by  the  Cleveland  Conven¬ 
tion,  whereby  every  presiding  elder’s  district  will 
endeavor  to  raise  at  least  a  dollar  per  member  for 
missions  ;  each  pastor  will  encourage  each  member  of  his 
church  to  give,  at  least,  one  dollar  to  missions  ;  every 


The 

Peril  of 
Indecision 


Simple,  yet 
Effective 


Epworth  League  or  Sunday-school  worker,  every  member 
of  a  missionary  committee,  and  every  individual,  will 
take  up  the  cry:  “A  dollar  per  member,  the  mini¬ 
mum  ;  ability  to  give,  the  maximum.”  If  this  ideal 
be  realized,  three  million  dollars  will  flow  annually  into 
our  missionary  treasury,  and  the  work  which  is  before 
the  Church  can  be  vigorously  prosecuted. 

The  Commission  would  not  be  thought  visionary, 
nor  does  it  believe  that  the  desired  result  can  be  obtained 
without  well-organized  effort.  Machinery  will  be  set  in 
motion  ;  a  corps  of  secretaries  will  be  ready  to  render 
any  service  within  their  power  ;  printed  matter  will  be 
published ;  but  the  ultimate  aim,  A  dollar  per 
member,”  will  not  be  lost  sight  of,  nor  will  the  fact  that 
it  is  not  by  might  or  by  an  army,  but  by  the  Spirit  of 
Jehovah  of  Hosts,  that  the  work  must  be  done. 

Signed  : 

E.  G.  ANDREWS. 

C.  H.  FOWLER. 

A.  B.  LEONARD. 

H.  K.  CARROLL. 

HOMER  EATON. 

JOHN  F.  GOUCHER. 

J.  M.  BUCKLEY. 

F.  D.  GAMEWELL. 

ANDERSON  FOWLER. 

JOHN  R.  MOTT. 

S.  EARL  TAYLOR. 


